


Shall Pass Through Fire and Water

by Zinnith



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Community: kissemdanno, Fire, First Kiss, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, perceived character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-13
Updated: 2011-04-13
Packaged: 2017-10-18 00:33:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/183036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zinnith/pseuds/Zinnith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Steve is not getting out of that building alive.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Shall Pass Through Fire and Water

**Author's Note:**

> For ciaimpala prompt: _one (or both) think the other is dead, cue epic reunion with lots of kissing._  
>  Thank you very much, kensieg for the beta.

Danny coughs and coughs, pauses to swear, and then coughs some more. Behind his back, Honolulu’s finest are milling around; firefighters, EMT’s, policemen. The warehouse is still burning, but it’s more or less under control now, nothing at all like the inferno Danny and Kono barely escaped from an hour ago.

The smoke is not quite so thick here a bit away from the scene, but every breath still burns in his abused lungs. Danny’s sitting on the edge of the pier, his feet dangling off the side, doing his best not to attract attention. He’s pretty sure someone will turn up and drag him back to the ambulance any second now, since he sort of wandered off after the EMT’s decided that he wasn’t going to suddenly drop dead. Everyone were busy with Kono’s swollen ankle when Danny slipped away, desperate for a moment or two to himself to try to get a handle on things.

He can’t bring himself to turn around and look at the fire. His eyes are stinging, partly from the smoke, but mostly because the terrible truth is beginning to sink in, digging its claws into Danny’s heart.

Steve is not coming out of that building alive.

It feels like a bad dream. Part of him keeps expecting the crazy bastard to just walk out of the flames, like he stepped right out of a bad action movie. For once, Danny actually wants to be back in the McGarrett Zone, where nothing is impossible.

He’s going to have to tell Gracie. Shit, he’s going to have to tell _Mary_ and he doesn’t know what to say to either of them.

There are a thousand things he should be doing instead of sitting here - call Grace and Rachel and let them know he’s alive, make sure Kono’s okay, inform the Governor, start working on the reports, get himself to the hospital while he’s at it because he’s pretty sure all the black muck he’s been coughing up isn’t a good thing. He has no idea where to start and all he can think about is the way Steve grinned before he took off after the suspect, only seconds before the fire started.

Then Danny hears footsteps behind him and turns around, trying to hold back a shudder when he catches sight of the burning warehouse out of the corner of his eye. It’s a warm afternoon and he probably shouldn’t be feeling this cold.

“You all right, brah?” Chin Ho asks, stepping closer.

Concern, relief and grief are warring for dominance on his face, and Danny tries to come up with an answer, but it’s too difficult, he has no idea how to be all right again.

“They find anything?” he asks instead.

The words are coming out rough and scratchy. His head is killing him and his throat hurts. The EMT’s told him to try not to talk too much. Both Kiele and Nick know him and the rest of Five-0 well enough by now that it was said with a knowing smile, one Danny just didn’t have the heart to return. Not today, not without Steve standing beside him, grinning about how he’ll appreciate the silence.

Chin shakes his head. “It’s still too hot to go anywhere near it. We’ll have to wait.”

Wait to dig Steve’s body out of the rubble. Danny’s vision goes a little hazy and he shakes his aching head to try to wipe out the memory of what Meka looked like when they found him. There’s no way he’s going to be able to see Steve like that, a lump of charred meat, twisted and deformed. The bile is rising in his throat and his head is swimming. He’s going to be sick.

“How are you doing? You’re white as a sheet.” Chin kneels beside him, putting a hand on his back and Danny dimly wonders if he looks as bad as he feels.

He swallows a couple of times, fighting the nausea, wishing he could take a deep breath without starting up the coughing again. “I’m good,” he manages after a few moments when he’s reasonably sure he’s not going to puke. He looks back over his shoulder, towards the ambulance. “What about Kono, is she okay?” In the distance, he can see her sitting on a gurney, ankle elevated and iced, with Nick the EMT fussing over her.

“They’re treating her for smoke inhalation and her ankle’s broken. She’s going to be on crutches for a while.” Chin’s mouth tenses, a thin line sketching out the barely suppressed fear of what could have been. “She wouldn’t have made it out on her own. Thanks, brah.”

“She would’ve done the same thing for me,” Danny says.

It gets caught in his throat and set him off coughing again, doubling him over with the force of it. He can almost feel the flames licking at him, can hear the staircase give way even under Kono’s slight weight. Can still remember the horrible realisation, that he’d have to chose between getting Kono out and going after Steve.

Danny coughs until he can’t breathe, the world going grey and hazy around him, and only Chin’s arm around his shoulders is keeping him from falling head first into the water. It’s hard to tell what hurts worse, his burning lungs or the achingly empty Steve-shaped hole in his heart. He never said anything. For all their flirting, the weird mating dance they had going around each other, Danny never said a word, never acted on the attraction they both knew was there. It’s too late now. He’ll never get another chance to berate Steve for forgetting his wallet whenever it’s time to pay a bar tab. He’ll never catch another one of those warm, fond smiles when Steve thinks he’s not looking. He’ll never find out what it’d be like to kiss Steve, to trace the lines of his ink with fingers and lips.

Chin is all but holding him up when the coughing fit ends and Danny finally manages to draw in a shaky breath to chase away the black spots in his vision.

“You need more oxygen,” Chin decides, and yeah, he might not be wrong about that. “Come on, can you stand up?”

His legs don’t want to hold his full weight, but with Chin’s help, Danny manages to get to his feet. Then he has to close his eyes and lean into Chin’s shoulder for a moment when a wave of dizziness hits. He’s probably going to have to move that hospital visit up a few steps on the to-do list.

They slowly begin to make their way back to the ambulance. Kono catches sight of them and waves and Danny raises his hand and waves back, trying to signal that there’s no need for her to worry about him. He's probably failing to get the point across, because Kono’s face takes on a look of alarm and she tries to get off the gurney, despite Nick and Kiele’s best efforts to keep her there. Danny struggles to get enough air into his lungs to shout to her that he’s all right, but then he realises that Kono’s not looking at him and Chin, she’s looking at something _behind_ them.

Then he hears it, the splashing of water, the weak groan.

Danny turns around and for a split second he’s convinced he’s either going to puke or pass out, possibly both, because there’s no mistaking the wet, miserable figure slumping on the edge of the pier. Stupid cargo pants and t-shirt plastered to his body, struggling to roll over onto his back. A couple of minutes ago, he was dead, and now Danny’s world makes an abrupt shift back into the McGarrett Zone, where Steve is suddenly, miraculously alive.

With a burst of adrenaline, Danny gets his feet steady underneath him, breaks loose of Chin’s hold and runs back the way they came, down the pier, until he stumbles to a stop and sinks to his knees beside his partner, not quite believing his eyes.

Steve looks like he _should_ be dead, drenched and pale, with blood streaming down the side of his face and angry red burns on his hands and forearms. He’s breathing hard and his eyes are a little unfocused when he looks up at Danny and smiles, wide and bright like the sun breaking through rain-heavy clouds.

“Hey, I wasn’t sure you guys made it out,” Steve croaks.

Danny can’t find any words, he opens and closes his mouth a few times, tries to clear his throat and wheezes, “ _You_ weren’t sure, I can’t even, you maniac... You were _dead_!” and then he pulls Steve up against him and holds him close, water soaking through his smoke-ruined shirt. Steve’s hand comes up to curl around his neck and Danny can’t help himself, he turns his head and mouths at Steve’s jaw, stubble rough against his lips, tasting blood and salt water.

Steve angles his head so their lips meet, finally. It’s frantic and clumsy and Danny’s shaking so hard that their teeth clatter together and he’s dizzy and short of breath but none of that matters since Steve is _alive_.

“I’m okay,” Steve murmurs against his skin. “Jesus, Danno, I’m _okay_.”

Then Danny’s coughing again, and it’s not stopping this time. Steve is rubbing his back, up and down, up and down, and it helps a little, but he still can’t seem to catch his breath and the world is beginning to tilt around in a gentle spin. Distantly, he can hear Chin shouting, “Hey, we need some help over here!”

It all fades away a bit after that. Running feet, concerned voices, something pressed against his face that helps a little with the coughing. The most vivid thing he’s aware of is Steve holding onto his hand, refusing to let go, and Danny concentrates on that, letting the knowledge of safe and alive carry him.

* * *

“I jumped out of the window,” McGarrett reports a little later when they’re all safely bundled up in the back of the ambulance. Someone found Steve a towel to dry his hair and he’s missing his shirt again, something Danny would appreciate a lot more if he wasn’t too short of breath to enjoy it properly. Danny has an oxygen mask that Chin keeps slapping back on his face every time he removes it to say something, and Kiele the EMT is smearing salve on Steve’s burned hands.

“The _second floor_ window?” Danny manages to rasp out before Chin makes him put the mask on again. Jeez, you'd think he's never seen a guy cough himself unconscious before.

Steve shrugs. “The stairs were blocked, it was the only way out. Anyway, I meant to land in the water but I must’ve hit something on the way down. Got a little turned around.”

From the look of his back and shoulder and the stiff way he’s holding himself, he’s soon going to be black and blue all over. Still, no broken bones, only a light concussion. Danny can’t believe his luck.

He can’t take his eyes off Steve and he has a hundred different things to say. It’s just typical that he can barely make a sound without starting to hack up more dark-coloured mucus. The next time he has an emotional epiphany, he’ll try to time it so he doesn’t have his lungs full of soot because this is possibly the least attractive he’s ever felt.

But Steve looks like he doesn’t care. When Kiele is done with his hands, he links his right ring finger and pinky, the only parts of his hand that aren’t burned, around Danny’s thumb and holds on. Danny’s hand is still trembling a little bit, and when no one’s looking too closely, Steve lifts it and presses a kiss to his knuckles. There’s a question in his eyes that Danny doesn’t quite know the answer to yet, but it doesn’t matter. They’re both alive and they have more than enough time now to figure it out.

\- fin -


End file.
